San Francisco for country mice

Driving to the city was a great experience for our kids. "Who lives in those long houses, Mom?" 

Dear, those are hundreds of houses, not one. They're just really really close together. 

"Where are the trees? Where are the backyards? Where do the children play?" 

"Why are there so many cars on the road? Why aren't we moving?" 

"Why are there people with signs for food at the corners?"

"Who painted their name on the buildings?" 

"Why would they make a sign in Chinese if no one in California can read it?"  

It was fun to show the kids a totally different way of normal life than they are used to living and teach our little country mice about things they only know a taste of exposure to, if any: traffic, graffitti, homelessness, multilingual families, skyscrapers, multi level freeways, multi lane freeways (ok just multiple freeways in general is a shocker to them), commute trains, recycle bins and "save water" signs everywhere. We had some great discussions.  

The weather was absolutely gorgeous in San Francisco. Clear sky, perfect temp, just beautiful. We get a lot of comments from Californians who say they could "never" live in Ar because we get summer and winter there. I'm willing to bet that the super gross traffic we battled is there 365 days a year. It's a trade off. After taking 3 1/2 hours to get somewhere that should normally take 1 to 1 1/2 hours, we agreed that we'll take our four seasons happily, but to each their own. We loved our visit!